British Columbia, CA — Kyle Lydell Canty decided last year that he would flee to Canada after he says, police in his native country were targeting black people for extermination.

While in Canada, Canty filed for refugee status.

According to VICE, at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing in October, where he represented himself, Canty argued that black people are “being exterminated at an alarming rate” in the US, and presented exhibits meant to demonstrate the human rights conditions in his home country, including videos of his own and others’ experiences of being harassed by cops, various news reports, and the handbook from the UN refugee agency UNHCR on determining refugee status.

“I then presented evidence specifically dealing with me, such as documents dealing with false arrests, no probable cause, evidence of extortion on behalf of the police departments and courts,” he told VICE News in October.

African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the population, yet they are the victims in 26 percent of all police shootings. That is nearly three times the rate of whites.

The outrage by the #Black Lives Matter movement is founded on statistical evidence which shows that the system inherently and with extreme bias disproportionately targets blacks.

As former Congressman Ron Paul pointed out on national television on Jan 16, 2012;

[Black peope] are tried and imprisoned disproportionately. They suffer the consequence of the death penalty disproportionately. Rich white people don’t get the death penalty very often. And most of these are victimless crimes. Sometimes people can use drugs and get arrested three times and never committed a violent act and they can go to prison for life. I think there’s discrimination in the system, but you have to address the drug war. I would say the judicial system is probably one of the worst places where prejudice and discrimination still exists in this country.

Despite making up only 7% of the entire population, black males make up 37% of the prison population. Almost 3% of all black males in the US were imprisoned as of December 31, 2013.

So, when Canty says that police in America are targeting blacks at an alarming rate – his statement is not unfounded.

However, despite presenting his case before the board, the IRB decided that Canty doesn’t have a well-founded fear of persecution under UN grounds — race, nationality, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion — in the US, reports VICE.

Ron Yamauchi, member of the IRB, wrote that Canty’s deportation back to America wouldn’t “subject him personally to a risk to his life or to a risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.”

Yamauchi claimed that Canty’s intentions were political in nature. “All of this is political and has nothing to do with refugee law,” he wrote.

On average, police in America kill at a rate 70 times that of its Western neighbors. In just the last week of December, American cops killed more people than the country of England killed in the last five years.

If these numbers aren’t indicative of a crisis, then when will they be? 100 times? 200 times?

Many people will predictably cite the crime of black on black violence in an attempt to downplay these staggering numbers.

“If the BlackLivesMatter movement really cared about black lives then they would say something about the black on black crime in poverty-stricken neighborhoods across the United States.”

This assertion comes from opponents of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and is usually made by police apologists who ignore the fact that police kill black men at a much higher rate than whites.

But police killing black men and black men killing black men, are not mutually exclusive. They are closely tied together, and the reason they are tied together is something that the #BlackLivesMatter movement, its supporters, and its opponents continue to ignore.

What so many people fail to add to this equation of violence is the role that the state’s war on drugs plays in the incarceration and death rate of young black males.

The war on drugs has been exposed for creating a nearly exponential increase in crime and overdose deaths. It does nothing to curtail drug use and it has only served to turn America into a freedom-hating, deadly police state.

When so many people are tasked with finding and prosecuting those in possession of a substance deemed illegal, police interactions become more frequent and less cordial. Couple the effects of more frequent and less cordial interactions with a system rife with racism and we find ourselves in the midst of this violent mess we call America.

Running away from this problem won’t end it. It must be exposed and addressed and not by the politicians on high from behind their marble pillars. Only through a societal awakening will any of these atrocities end. We must help each other to seek out a lesser ignorance that will inevitably lead to more freedom.

We won’t become free when the police state goes away, rather, the police state will go away–only when we become free.